The Boleyn Bride Read online

  11

  Everyone expected that to be the end of it. They assumed that King Henry would give up. It was just too difficult; too much to lose and too little to gain was the common consensus. No one believed my daughter was worth a kingdom and eternal damnation. After all, she was not the only woman in England; there were so many more much prettier and sweet-tempered girls ready to oblige their beloved monarch. But Anne had something up her fashionable, self-styled Boleyn sleeve.

  But first . . . first she had to remind the King what he was fighting for and silence all those naysayers and doubting Thomases, including her own father, who, like a weathercock, had suddenly turned and stood, once again, convinced that she could never win.

  “Submit now or lose him forever, and end up with nothing like your foolish sister,” he insisted, reaching out to grasp Anne’s shoulders and give her a hard shake.

  But Anne would do things her way.

  That very night, when King Henry sat down to dine, he found the Great Hall transformed. Great lengths of glimmering tinsel cloth in shades of silver, pearly white, icy and deep greens, and aquatic blues, both pale and dark, were stretched across the immense room, gripped at the edges by concealed attendants who moved them up and down in gentle undulating ripples to simulate waves. The whole scene was lit by lanterns with clear, blue, or green glass globes set upon a spinning wheel to create an eerie, mysterious world one might imagine existing under the sea.

  A great silver painted papier-mâché oyster shell was carried in by George, Francis Weston, William Brereton, and Henry Norris, all of them garbed as handsome, bare-chested sapphire- and emerald-tailed mermen with their legs cunningly concealed inside the great pearly white and pale blue seahorses they rode, with wheels cleverly hidden beneath blue waves at the base of each mount. They had rubbed their skin with oil containing gold and silver dust and donned wigs of wild wavy green and blue locks threaded with pearls and crowned with diamond-encrusted starfish and exquisitely jeweled shells, and even put golden rings in their ears and hung thick ropes of creamy pearls and vivid pink, red, and orange coral about their necks.

  As the music played, the melody undulating like waves, they slowly opened that great oyster shell. Reclining on a bed of coral satin, Anne slowly sat up, tantalizingly veiled in her long satiny black hair. As she swung her bare feet over its rim, it appeared at first that she was wearing nothing beneath her hair but rope upon rope of lustrous white pearls, some hanging all the way down to her slim, naked ankles. But no, when she took George’s hand, and he, shed of his seahorse, with his legs encased in shimmering hose with a pattern of blue and green scales, led her out to dance, we saw that she wore a sheath of sheer white linen sewn all over with thousands of pearls, some draped across her body, others hanging down in loose swaying ropes.

  King Henry sat forward, entranced, gripping the edge of the table, unable to take his eyes off her. All she had to do was dance. That’s all it took. At the end, when she sank down, gracefully, to her knees, and George set a towering crown of pearls upon her head, we all knew, no matter what it took, even if the very earth must move, she would have her way; and another crown, set upon her head by an archbishop in Westminster Abbey, would come her way very soon.

  Only then, after she had danced, to remind the King and rekindle his lust, did Anne lay down her next card.

  Anne and George and their circle of friends were fascinated by bold and new ideas, particularly those espousing religious reformation. Martin Luther, a former monk in Germany, and his cry for church reform, blocking the sale of indulgences and allowing the scriptures to be translated into each nation’s native tongue so that everyone, common and great, ignorant and educated alike, could understand them, instead of hoarding those sacred words like precious treasures as the priests with their scholarly, elite Latin did, had struck a chord with them.

  One afternoon Anne lay on a chaise, boldly perusing one of her forbidden books, a banned volume, William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man, the possession of which Cardinal Wolsey had decreed a criminal offense. Most cunningly, she brought a particular passage to His Majesty’s attention wherein it was stated that the king was the highest power in his dominion, and it was treason to acknowledge any other authority as higher than his.

  “So . . .” Anne purred, stroking her wide fur cuffs. “Who has more power here in England, I wonder? King Henry, who is actually here, or Pope Clement, who is far away in Rome? Interesting, is it not?”

  She tapped her chin like one perplexed by a very great problem, though she wasn’t confused at all. Anne knew exactly what she was doing—she had just given King Henry the key to make all his dreams come true.

  Thus she set the wheels of his mind in motion. Soon King Henry was envisioning himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England, with no more tithes and tributes flowing out of England into Rome’s already rich and overflowing coffers, and with all the wealth of the monasteries at his disposal.

  Anon, she set those wheels turning even faster when she introduced him to a churchman called Cranmer who advised Henry to take a poll amongst the learned doctors in the universities regarding the validity of his marriage to Queen Catherine. And Henry was delighted when—as we all knew it would—the verdict, when it came, was exactly the one he wanted to hear—his marriage to Catherine was, by the world’s great universities, deemed invalid. King Henry, the scholars opined, should be free to divorce Queen Catherine and marry whomever he pleased. As a reward, Cranmer would later be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Then it was time to leave on the Summer Progress, where the King would tour the rustic reaches of his realm, visit the country houses of his nobility, and show himself to his adoring people, those poor country folk who never got up to London.

  Before, Queen Catherine had always accompanied him. But this time word came she would be going elsewhere—alone, never to return to the King’s palace or favor. Anne would be taking her place on the Progress, and her apartments when she returned at summer’s end.

  King Henry refused to see Catherine before he left, and when she sent a servant scurrying after him to convey her good wishes and undying affection, he thrashed the fellow soundly with his cap while Anne sat, cool and serene, in her gilded saddle, in a riding habit the color of quinces, twining her fingers in the rich rope of grass green emeralds Henry had that morning hung about her neck, smiling beneath the brim of her beguilingly feathered hat.

  Defiantly, Queen Catherine stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard and called down to him.

  “Come what may, I shall love you and remain your true wedded wife and queen until my dying day! Even though you have broken the promise you made to me, that no one would ever hurt me, and I would never cry again, once we were married, my love for you endures, unbroken, always, until the day I die!”

  Henry made no answer; he merely turned his back and rode away with Anne beside him.

  Though my husband and son were quick to join King Henry and Anne on the Summer Progress, I did not accompany them. I pled illness, implying it was of the unpleasant female variety, the sort of ailment men are most unlikely to press for details regarding, and took myself off to Hever with Remi. I did not like what was happening and wanted no part of it. That day I wished I had been brave enough to smother my daughter in her cradle.

  The rest of Queen Catherine’s life would be spent in crumbling country castles, cold and dank, and deleterious to her health, until her dear heart at last gave out. She went where Henry ordered her, without a murmur of complaint, saying only to the minions who came to enforce the King’s orders, “Tell my husband, the King, that go where I may, even unto the ends of the earth, until my heart stops beating, I will remain his true and lawful wife and queen of this realm; time and distance cannot change that. Tell him also that I pray daily for his soul and that of his concubine as well.”

  Henry hoped to break her proud spirit, and if he could not do that, to punish her for refusing to set him free to fol
low where his lust led. He wanted to show her how hard he could make things for her, to emphasize the contrast between what might have happened had she been more agreeable. He had offered her the title of Dowager Princess of Wales and a life, spent in quiet seclusion away from the court, of course, with all the trappings of luxury befitting her rank. But Catherine would not deny her marriage and see her only surviving child, Princess Mary, declared a bastard. She would hold firm until the very end, even when they refused to let her see her sick daughter and took her jewels away, and her clothes grew raggedy, and moths devoured her furs. And even when a nasty cough racked and rattled her chest and she burned with fever, Catherine would persist in declaring herself Henry’s wife and Queen of England until her dying day.

  That Christmas Anne presided over the court as though she were indeed Queen. She sat resplendent in holly berry red satin, sipping hot spiced wine and idly nibbling upon sugar wafers and mincemeat tarts, surrounded by George and their friends, all of them clothed in evergreen velvet and silken hose of the same hue, and listened as King Henry sang a song he had written in her honor, as testament to his true and everlasting love for the woman he vowed would soon be his wife.

  Green groweth the holly, so doth the ivy.

  Though winter blasts blow never so high,

  Green groweth the holly.

  As the holly groweth green

  And never changes hue,

  So I am, and ever hath been,

  Unto my lady true.

  As the holly groweth green,

  With ivy all alone

  When flowers cannot be seen

  And greenwood leaves be gone.

  Now unto my lady

  Promise to her I make:

  From all others only

  To her I me betake.

  Green groweth the holly, so doth the ivy.

  Though winter blasts blow never so high,

  Green groweth the holly.

  When he was done, Anne applauded and, as he had done so many times after her own performances, implored an encore. King Henry obliged, gallantly bowing and declaring, “Anything for my beloved! Eternal and evergreen shall ever be my love for you!” And while he sang, Anne danced in a swirl of brilliant red satin, bright as the finest ruby, surrounded by the men she had just laughingly dubbed her “Evergreen Gallants.”

  Gazing down upon them from the top of the stairs, seeing my red-gowned daughter, surrounded by these four gentlemen in green, it was like looking at a holly berry cradled in the midst of its evergreen foliage. Again and again, each time King Henry finished, Anne implored him to sing it again, and again, and again, and went on dancing with her brother and their true and constant friends, the ones, time would prove, who were truly eternal and evergreen in their devotion to her.

  I stood and watched for a while and then, doubting that I would be missed, I put on my cloak, took the little bundle of mincemeat tarts I had bade my maid pack for me, and went to Remi. As I walked softly through the snow I thought about Queen Catherine and wondered how she was faring alone on this the first Christmas since she had become queen that she had spent without her beloved Henry.

  Queen Catherine was the first of Anne’s enemies to fall. The next would be the great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey. It had been a few years coming, but she had not forgotten her vow of vengeance.

  Wolsey had been confident that he could sway Cardinal Campeggio to deliver the desired verdict when he sat in judgment in the Pope’s place at Blackfriars. And he had failed.

  Anne had not forgotten. And she had not let Henry forget it either. She found evidence that the crafty Cardinal, who always swore he served the King before all others, was secretly in league with the Pope, that he opposed the divorce, or, if it was granted, he wanted a French Catholic princess for Henry instead of “a nobody like Nan Bullen.”

  Anne was determined to make him pay. She had him sent from the court, shorn of his greatest titles and possessions, including the Great Seal of England and his sumptuous palaces, Hampton Court and York Place. She twisted the knife in further by sending her old love, Harry Percy, to arrest the tired, broken, old, silver-haired man at the humble country bishopric where he had retreated in his shame and disgrace.

  But Wolsey would rather risk his immortal soul than public humiliation on the scaffold. He died en route to London. Some said he secretly took poison; others that he simply willed himself into the grave. His last words were that he should have served God better than he had the King; perhaps then He would not have abandoned him in his gray hairs.

  Meanwhile, a new creature, a clever, ruthless lawyer named Cromwell, came to take Wolsey’s place, one who would not scruple or suffer even a twinge of conscience at putting the King’s will before God’s. Cromwell was one of those crafty men who got results and made things happen. Henry had only to snap his fingers and speak his wishes and his will would be done; Cromwell, or “Crum” as he fondly called him, would see to it, never letting little things like a conscience or his immortal soul stand in his way. Something of a ruffian in his youth, this son of a Putney blacksmith had roamed about Italy soaking up the teachings of Machiavelli. He believed feelings like love, loyalty, and lust were liabilities that only stood in a man’s way and he was better off without them. He was devoid of fear, pity, or remorse. In the blink of an eye or a snap of the King’s fingers, Anne would later find, a friend could become an enemy, to be persecuted relentlessly unto the ultimate destruction.

  When the news came of Wolsey’s demise, Anne and her friends gleefully celebrated by staging a ghoulish, macabre masque they called “Cardinal Wolsey Goes to Hell.” What fun they all had capering as skeletons, leering demons, incubi, succubi, witches, and fallen angels amidst flaming torches and clouds of opium-scented incense and black and red smoke. Francis Weston particularly relished playing the role of Cardinal Wolsey.

  Anne and her friends did a lengthy, unabashedly sensual dance as black-winged fallen angels. When Anne and George danced together, floating and gliding sensually through clouds of black and blue incense like a pair of black swans, in their sleek ebony feathers, dark hair, and black satin, I saw George’s wife, Jane, sitting beside me, clench her teeth and stab a gilded fork into the palm of her hand until it drew blood.

  In truth, I could not blame her. The way they danced together that night, they looked like lovers, passionate, devoted, and made for each other.

  After that disturbing interlude, when my daughter and her black-winged adorers had departed to make a quick costume change, the legions of Hell returned for more frenzied cavorting; they even had trained monkeys in to caper and dance with them with black wings and red devil horns strapped to their ugly little furry forms, and black goats with their horns painted red led about on leashes butting and bleating amidst the red and black smoke, and dancers clad as nuns and priests miming copulation with fanged, horned, and forked tailed red-skinned demons. They borrowed fierce jungle cats from the royal menagerie and had them put in cages with servants stationed beside to poke them with sticks to make them emit furious roars throughout the evening, blending with music that was by turns frenetic, chaotic, furious, slow, sensual, caressing, and erotic; it rose and fell, crescendoed and crashed with such suddenness and violence that not a one of us who sat in obedient attendance and watched that grotesque spectacle didn’t leave the Great Hall that night without our nerves sorely jangled and linger a little longer over our bedside prayers before we blew the candles out.

  But even that—God help us!—was not enough! This night, it seemed, excess was everything! They brought in extra dancers to flesh out their numbers as they danced the Seven Deadly Sins, to tempt and taunt and caress the damned Cardinal Wolsey.

  Anne—gowned in red satin, and a mantle of wire stiffened orange and yellow flames, with gold paint around her eyes—exquisitely danced the role of Lust, pausing to caress the Cardinal’s thigh through his red robes.

  The court sat silent and aghast, sickened and appalled, but not a one of us could tear o
ur eyes away. Though Cardinal Wolsey had been much hated, and many gloried in his destruction, this, we all agreed, was in terribly bad taste.

  I shook my head and wished myself anyplace but here as my daughter, returning to enact the role of Avarice, appeared before us resplendent in a gold and silver tinsel gown sewn with gold and silver coins, and George, Brereton, and Norris, with gilded baskets filled with jingling coins sewn onto their costumes, and Weston as Wolsey in his voluminous red robes, joined her in a vigorous dance as her adoring, worshipping slaves, showered her with gold and hung jewels about her throat and draped ermine around her shoulders.

  When it ended, with George as His Satanic Majesty, stabbing Wolsey in the posterior with a ruby-studded red-painted pitchfork and sending him plunging, screaming, into the Pit of Hell, I was never happier to see the conclusion of any performance in my entire life.

  I could see by the expression on his face that King Henry—even though he applauded and praised the dancers’ talent and the novelty, artistry, and inventiveness of the evening’s entertainment, declaring it “wondrously brave,” “incredibly bold,” and “most ingenious”—also thought it was too much and in exceedingly bad taste. Perhaps, now that he had lost him, he was remembering how much he had once loved Wolsey; my husband, who feared Anne had finally gone too far with this epic production of grotesque gloating over an enemy’s demise, said there had been a time when the man was like a father to him; Henry had entrusted him with the daily governance of the realm and had turned to him whenever he had felt troubled or in need of advice.

  Maybe Anne, seeing King Henry’s face, thought she had too.

  That night she rewarded Henry by giving him “a little taste—a foretaste—of heaven.” She let him into her bed—a fat white feather bed covered in quilted white satin, hung with white lace curtains, like a tantalizing veil, where she lay, a black-haired angel in alluring, clinging white satin, whilst in each corner, blindfolded, white-winged and gilt-haloed harpists played, and I sat, unsmilingly, doing a mother’s duty and acting as my daughter’s chaperone, in a straight-backed gilded chair outside her open bedchamber door.